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The soviet central committee tried this and failed miserably. the state run farms under produced the small private plots of land.

The Soviet system was rife with corruption and other human-factors. Of course communism doesn't work in reality - but plenty of ideas it takes (to their logical extremes) have a firm evidential basis - such as the principle that the state should serve its citizens directly and apply directed social-engineering (the sociological kind, not the penetration-attack kind) to achieve results - it's just so unfortunate that many of their grand experiments (such as the Five Year Plan and the Great Leap Forward) failed so miserably.

My mantra is "evidence-based decision-making" - choose the option that has the most evidence supporting its case, rather than emphasising simple (or "pure") ideology. In this case, the styles of government and social systems well-established in Western Europe (Germany, Scandinavia, etc) are all doing so well that Germany is capitalising on the misfortune (and mismanagement) of Greece's internal finances to bankroll their bailout package and maintain one of the world's highest quality of life indexes. On that basis, how can it be said that socialism is "bad", "doesn't work", or "evil" considering the evidence is right there, 400 miles from my doorstep.